"Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them."
Leadership isn't necessarily something that everyone wants.
In some movies, the whole plot is someone trying to take power, take leadership from someone else. But in Gone With The Wind, it's almost the opposite.
Of course though, it wouldn't be much of a movie if Scarlet got her happy ever after at the beginning of the film. The man she loves, Ashley Wilkes, cares for Scarlet, but not in the way she hoped. Instead, he marries Mellie, a beautifully kind woman who has nothing but adoration towards Scarlet.
When Ashley goes off to war, he asks Scarlet to take care of Mellie. This is sort of the beginning of when we see Scarlet take a leadership role in the film. Even though she doesn't do it for the right reasons, she befriends Mellie, with the underlying reason of pleasing Ashley.
Everything Scarlet does is to please others and make them like her. She knows the women are biased against her, for stealing the attention of all the men, but those aren't the opinions that Scarlet cares for, because those aren't the people who she needs to be impressing.
In metaphorical terms as well as literal terms, as the war gets closer to Georgia, Scarlet's leadership responsibilities grow. She becomes a nurse towards wounded soldiers, aiding De. Meade as he tries to attend to as many men as he can.
In today's day and age, we might not necessarily think of this as traditional leadership. Looking at it through the context of the Civil War as well as knowing that becoming a nurse was probably not something Scarlet wanted to do with her life, I think it's safe to say that this character change within Scarlet is her becoming a leader.
As the Yankees converge on Georgia, Mellie's pregnancy causes issues surrounding their departure to Scarlet's family's plantation. They cannot move her but they also can't stay where they are. When Scarlet goes to find Dr. Meade to help with the delivery, he refuses her.
Together, they all escape and begin the trek to Scarlet's plantation. As a viewer, it almost felt like in the presence of Butler, Scarlet can ease some of the weight of her leadership off her shoulders and onto his. But, at a fork in the road, figuratively and literally, Butler decides he is going off to war. Scarlet begs him but he leaves the women, shifting all that pressure back onto Scarlet.
So, with a newborn baby, a mother in desperate need of medical attention and a maid who is scared out of her mind, Scarlet leads the women to her plantation. They go for miles and miles, going as far as hiding under a bridge in a thunderstorm as Yankee troops walk over them.
When they finally arrive at the plantation, the horse keels over and dies from the amount of exertion they've put on him. Scarlet knew no one else was going to be able to save them so she did it herself.
Fortunately, Scarlet arrives him to find her father there along with Mammy and Pork, two loyal servants to the O'Hara family. Her father appears to be delirious, his health having gone downhill since the death of his wife.
And here is where we see the final shift in leadership in Scarlet in the first part of the movie. No one can look to her father anymore for guidance because he is going out of his mind.
One of the last scenes before her famous "As God is my witness, I will never be hungry again!" quote, everyone is asking Scarlet what they should do. Everyone is desperate and they need someone to help lead them to salvation, and they all look towards Scarlet.
She never chose the path that she took, it was thrust upon her whether she liked it or not. Scarlet could have given up at any point, or shoved off the leadership to someone else, but she didn't.
Her will is much stronger than anyone thinks, and it is clearly shown through her character development through the first part of the movie.
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